Thursday, April 27, 2017

Critical Reaction to History Channel's JFK Declassified

John Newman: This was embarrassing for me to watch. It's another Phil Shennon special. Get ready for the Ken Burns documentary. They are propaganda extravaganzas that RFK got his brother killed and almost set off WWIII. Journey on.

Stuart Wexler:Reading tea leaves from the
"future episodes" clips I focused on the reference to a "safe
house." The only thing approaching a potential safe house I am aware of is
Harlandale Street. Well from what his interview is claiming, he is going to go
there but somehow finagle it to tie back to Castro, even though Alpha 66 was
militantly anti-Castro. If somehow he solidifies the Harlandale angle, that
would make the show somewhat worthwhile. But if all he is going to do is
recycle stuff Paul H. has been saying since the early 70s, and then somehow
push it back to Castro, he will be embarrassing himself.

(As Larry Haapanen said), there are
many similarities between this program and the one the same team did on Hitler
escaping to South America after WWII. I see many if those similarities.

1) Am alarming willingness to take credit for research and discoveries other
people already made.
2) A nasty habit of jumping to the most sinister possible interpretation of
anamolous events and discoveries.
3) Proceeding to the next stages and conclusions as if #2 is a "done
deal"

On the other hand, HH did get access to some people, documents and facilities
that no one had before, to the extent I could find in follow up investigation.
I did not buy their core argument about Hitler faking his death at all, and
they only pushed me from "highly doubtful" to "vaguely
plausible" that someone like Martin Borman faked his death. But a tertiary
argument, that escaped Nazis and Nazi sympathizers really were proactive, if
perhaps delusional, about pushing for a 4th Reich, wound up being a lot more
believable than I previously thought. So I will watch the rest of the JFK
series yelling at the TV and holding my nose.

Larry Hancock: That TV show on the History channel was
totally embarrassing, it’s very hard to respect anyone associated with it.especially
so since all the work was done by others ages ago.

Ed Tatro writes: The show is full of assumptions and fallacies
and absurd deductions – could haves – may haves – might haves – might prove – “All
the pieces are starting to fit together” ramblings.

Based on a postcard of a bull fight
arena in Oswald’s possession, these guys speculate that Oswald met secretly
with KGB personnel there.

They show actors playing Russians as
silent, sinister characters throughout the dramatization.

They refer to the documentation that
Oswald met with Valeri Kostokov to convince their audience of an Oswald/KGB
plot. Moreover they give the audience the impression that this Kostikov data is
newly declassified information and never researched previously by anyone in the
world. They actually show the men finding out all by themselves via computer
searches that “Kostin” is Kostikov with references to Department 13 and
assassination squad data.

No consideration is offered to cite
a motive for Oswald or for the Russians to want JFK dead. No consideration is
given to consider Oswald’s actions as an intelligence representative of the US government
in any fashion.

These men make reference to the
story that the FBI kept meticulous records of everything in Oswald’s
possession, an inaccurate assertion which implied that the FBI had conducted an
honest investigation. They continually insist that the CIA’s surveillance of
Oswald and any suspicious characters in Mexico City forced the Russians to
cleverly meet Oswald without detection.

The History Channel has reached a
new low in disinformation. The links are incredibly juvenile and fallacious in
its entirety.

The preview of episode two suggests
that there is a document signed by J. Edgar Hoover, (That bastion of
intergrity), in which Oswald admitted that he was going to kill Kennedy. The
document was flashed quickly and the threat is shown in quotation marks.

The fact that this garbage is being broadcast
now just prior to the release of more previously classified documentation in
the fall is no accident.

It was difficult to watch this
Orwellian hogwash. But it is proof that the propaganda machine is alive and
well despite the passage of nearly 54 years.

"Declassified documents reveal that
Oswald met with the Cold War enemies of the United States, both Russia and
Cuba, only eight weeks before JFK’s assassination."

This claim, made by the producers of
new History Channel docu-series JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald, is not
new. The claim may just be promotional hype for the series which begins tonight
and runs through May 30. But, from long experience with JFK documentaries, my
fact checking antennae are tingling.

It is not too soon to say the
History Channel’s claim is potentially misleading.

What is Misleading?

JFK authors and researchers have
long called attention to the importance of understanding the trip of accused
assassin Lee Oswald to Mexico City six weeks before the assassination of JFK
in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

Oswald, a leftist, wanted to travel
to Cuba and then to the Soviet Union. Seeking a visa, Oswald spoke with various
Cuban and Russian officials–some of whom were actually intelligence officers.

This is all well known.
Investigators Dan Hardway and Ed Lopez journalist Anthony
Summers, and historian John Newman, among many others have written in detail
about these events.

I wrote about Oswald’s encounters in
Mexico City in my 2008 book, Our Man in Mexico. And I will write
about them in my forthcoming biography of CIA counterintelligence
chief James Angleton.

If presented as a revelation in
2017, the claim that Oswald met with “enemies” of the United States is a
species of archaic Cold War propaganda.